


Lutum et Aurum

by winterlain



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Needles, No Body Horror, mild D/s themes, non-graphic, piercing kink, pre-canon/during canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterlain/pseuds/winterlain
Summary: He got the earring in Pondicherry, on the occasion of making midshipman. Edward Little was twenty-four and the world was his oyster.





	Lutum et Aurum

He got the earring in Pondicherry, on the occasion of completing his apprenticeship and making midshipman. The yellow gold glinted ostentatiously in the tropical sunlight and its weight in his tingling earlobe felt daring and illicit. He strolled through the harbour market, the swagger of Francis Drake rolling in every step. He breathed in deeply the mingle of salt and spice, incense and livestock, feeling never more alive than here in the bustle of vendors and beggars and bodhisattvas. Edward Little was twenty-four and Her Majesty’s Empire lay before him, sparkling with the promise of a fresh akoya oyster, waiting to offer him adventure and glory, wealth and romance.

When furlough ended, he ruefully removed the ornament and placed it back in its velvet-lined case to be tucked away into his sea chest. The skin of his ear healed into just a shallow indentation that he would sometimes find himself fingering absently, longing for the pull of something heftier.

***

He had not been chosen to serve in the Oriental theatre but followed the day’s news as avidly as any Englishman and naval officer, tracing the insidious trail of opium and its eaters from Bengal to Canton, and all the way to the backstreets of Limehouse. There he pushed open a heavy ornamental door one night, leading from guttering streetlight into the swirling haze rising from the languid, dreaming forms that lined the cushioned floor. As dens of ill repute went, he had it on good authority that this was of the better sort. He had come here not to chase Elysian sleep (although he slept little enough most nights now) but to pursue rumours of a different persuasion, strange arts that had traveled far, far westward.

The ancient herbalist felt at his pulse points, bade him to inhale and exhale at intervals, inspected his tongue. The spines were delicate, smaller than the one that had pierced his ear, but Edward grew lightheaded with anticipation as the wiry, wizened hands held them aloft. As the first needle slid home between his eyebrows, there bloomed a frisson of something more thrilling than painful, a warm tingle that radiated outwards and set his limbs afloat. He closed his eyes and imagined each point as a pinprick of light that passed clean through him, as if he were made of nothing more than paper.

***

A chance barter with a Portuguese expatriate on the Pacific Station marked the beginning of a small but telling personal collection of artefacts. The ornate golden serpent, he was told, had once graced the lip of a young Aztec warrior, signifying his prowess in battle. He ran his fingertips over the intricate teeth, the tiny articulated tongue. That night he pressed at the isthmus of flesh between his chin and lower lip, thinking of service and servitude.

***

The jeweler and his wife had come from Paris to Malta, seeking fortune on the trade routes as had so many others before them. The showroom of their small portside shop was posh and tidy, but the parlour behind was a plush Bohemian sanctum wherein he sank into an embarrassment of pillows upon a tufted settee. She did not miss the tremor in the knee upon which rested his teacup, and gently brushed a hand over his own, her kind, pretty eyes crinkling into the warmest of smiles.

He could not help the blush that crept steadily upwards from his collar bones as she described to him the process with a surgeon’s calm competence, and then pragmatically undid her bodice to show him the result. He had seen earrings and occasionally labret-rings on sailors of course, but never anything so astonishingly erotic, and even more so on the petal-pink bosom of this proper lady and dark French beauty. She allowed him to touch, to trace the skin-warm circlets where they disappeared into yielding soft flesh.

The procedure took but minutes, completed before he could barely process what was being done to him, although truth be told he would not have minded its prolonging. She sent him on his way with a packet of styptic powder and instructions to clean and tend his new _anneaux des tétons_. He could feel their bobbing weight in every step he took, the friction against his linen shirtsleeves. It was glorious and obscene.

Returning to his modest rooms he undressed carefully, removing and laying aside each article like an offering, until he was utterly bare. He observed his body as best he could in the sliver of glass above the wash basin. The rings glittered where they caught the lamplight, encircling the rosy flushed nubs. _God_.

When he brought himself to completion, he spent like a typhoon breaking and afterwards dreamt that he was receiving a king’s burial at Teotihuacan.

***

North of the sixtieth parallel, they were instructed, metal would freeze to skin in a matter of seconds, rudely rending the flesh from weathered palms and tender eyelids alike. He had grown out his whiskers and in his coat and epaulets, truly looked the part of a first lieutenant of the expedition. When the ice held them fast for a second winter and Crozier descended into the bottle, he tamped down all the parts of him that desired to rail out, concealing more and more of himself beneath layers of wool serge, duty and reticent propriety. But in the hours when sleep eluded him, he would bring out the small trunk and hold its contents up to the wan light of the patent illuminator, allowing his mind to wander away, travelling the world over.

***

His eyes had met Jopson’s over the wardroom table. Duty brought them within close orbit, sentinels of the captain’s secrets and wardens of the tenuous order that threaded _Terror_. Steady, discreet, and consummate, Crozier’s steward was a credit to his profession and increasingly, to Edward’s unraveling nerves. Sitting together in the great cabin long past middle watch had gone up, they formulated each coming day’s strategy and relayed in hushed tones the channels of knowledge that ran from _Erebus_ to _Terror_, commander to ship’s boy, wardroom to orlop.

Gradually, as the temperatures fell and the daylight hours dwindled to embers, sombre conference had given way to sympathetic commiseration, lingering glances, warmth enfolding frost-nipped fingers. As they weathered the trials of monster and man, as blood spilled across the ice, sedition flared and sickness gnawed, Jopson had become _Thomas_.

Thomas, with whom he took cold meals in easy silence. Thomas, who brought his tea doused with a dram of precious whiskey after the frigid, perilous walk from ship to ship. Thomas, who had nodded off once with his head tipped to Edward’s shoulder as they kept vigil together in the great cabin, and had given him the softest, dazzling smile upon wakening. Thomas, whose generosity and selfless good nature he found himself impinging upon again and again. Thomas, who knew just how to hold him down and gentle him until the tremors subsided into long, shuddering breaths.

Thomas, who had walked the jagged topography of Edward’s terrain and mapped out each of his fault lines without censure. Thomas, who was so astute, who looked at Edward and saw how he longed to be pulled beneath the tide. Who understood perfectly how he needed to be pinned through, fucked open, punctured apart into pieces so small that the penumbra of their perforations formed something translucent and haloed, like to a man in shape only.

Thomas to whom one night, following horror and grief, immolation and exhaustion, he had with shaking hands revealed himself entirely, and whose gentle, capable fingers had fastened the links and pulled the chains where they joined to the tender summits of his body, the tug of it like a halyard hitched straight to his aching, dripping cock.

Edward wanted to weep from the purgation, the perfection of it.

_Shall we begin, sir? _Thomas said.

***

Every man had a duty to pack frugally for the impending haul. He knew that each superfluous spoon or sentimental daguerreotype might well be the shackle that thwarted their very salvation.

Clothing was the easiest. He would wear the bulk of his good woolens, forgoing the shabbier waxed slops in favour of great and frock coats, jumper, waistcoat, cap, wig, stock, and his four best shirts for rotation. Then just small clothes, stockings, an extra pair of mitts.

Books were more difficult, replaceable as he knew they would be once they had reached safety. The Cook and Nelson biographies, handsome though they were in their lambskin bindings, were in popular circulation and could easily be borrowed. He couldn’t bear to part with the well-thumbed volume of Coleridge from his brother, _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Kubla Khan_ having been his trusty companions on every voyage. He found comfort also in the strange and brutal trials of Candide, whose life, or at least its geography had traced the paths of Edward’s own. He pressed his palm to the woodcut frontispiece in something like a prayer and willed himself the tenacity to cultivate his own garden out in the wastes.

Next were practical items. Soaps and polishes, waxes and creams, decanted and scraped into smaller bottles and compact tins. From the hefty apothecarist’s kit, he transferred the most essential articles; sticking plasters, alum powder, tinctures of bromine and iodine. Their good surgeon had so many to tend already.

Lastly, at the very bottom of the trunk, he secreted the small case reserved for his most cherished and personal things. The heavy watch chain received from his father at his lieutenancy, which he hadn’t yet gotten around to polishing. A locket that opened to reveal portraits in miniature of his mother and grandmother. The earring of fine Indian gold. A parcel of boiled sweetmeats that Thomas, clever, wonderful Thomas had prepared himself back in Marylebone. And the flurry of little folded strips and scraps, secret notes left for him in Thomas’ tidy hand. _I’ve missed you_. _Sending you warmth for the journey ahead. Hoping this finds you in better spirits after yesterday’s you-know-what. Meet me at eight bells_. _Come to bed tonight_.

The thought of Thomas washed over him like a gentle breaker, easing smooth the furrows of sand and silt and allaying his dread for the upcoming trek. With Thomas as his anchor, he could find himself equal to anything, even this. They had already endured so much together, after all. Buoyed by this comfort, he lowered the lid of the case, pausing for just a moment before snapping it shut. Like an afterthought, a remnant of something no longer needed, he added the packet of needles bundled in their leather sleeve.

**Author's Note:**

> Initially inspired by [this request](https://terrorkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/396.html?thread=143244#cmt143244) referencing [this article](https://bodyartforms.com/blog/victorian-nipple-rings.asp) on the kink meme (which I art filled badly a million years ago) and ended up running sort of off the rails with this. Also, please go and read Dancains’ excellent and super hot [Briglar fill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566557) for it. <3


End file.
